EU, G-8 want India to join emergency summit on financial crisis
16 Oct 2008, 2055 Hrs

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Brussels, Oct.16 The European Union and the Group of Eight countries want India to join in an emergency global summit to devise strategies to tackle the global financial crisis and overhaul the world's financial system.

At the EU summit that ended on Thursday in Brussels, France, the current chairperson of the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc, and the UK pushed for participation of emerging economic powers like India and China in the global finance summit expected to be held in New York sometime next month.

A joint statement released by the White House said the leaders of the Group of Eight-- the US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia would meet "at an appropriate time in the near future."

The statement indicated that the G-8 nations would include other major nations in the discussions, which are to be aimed at drafting "an agenda for reforms to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

British Premier Gordon Brown said the meeting devoted to a complete overhaul of the financial system could be held as early as November.

He said the discussions "to take common action... for very large and very radical changes" should include not only the world's richest nations but also such major emerging economies as China and India.

At the EU summit, Sarkozy said emerging economies such as China and India outside the G-8 should also participate because "no one should feel excluded from what we are recasting".

"The summit was dominated by the current global financial crisis. Sarkozy said the meeting to forge common action to prevent another economic meltdown should be held in New York "where everything started" and lead toward "a new capitalism."

Sarkozy said all European Union nations now backed radical restructuring of international institutions like the International Monetary Fund(IMF) and World Bank.

EU leaders all "agreed that we don't want the same causes to produce the same effects in future."

Brown said the planned summit meeting would require vision similar to the creation of the U.N. and the Bretton Woods conference that laid out an international financial and monetary system in the 1940s.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the EU summit it was "essential" for the EU, the US and other countries to work "hand in hand."

"Europe is indispensable for a global response but a European response alone is not enough," Barroso said.(ANI with inputs)